For a couple of decades, it seemed like every time a new version of Windows was released, its hardware requirements would keep pace with hardware advancement, necessitating sometimes-costly hardware upgrades if you wanted to stay up on the latest software. Nowhere was this more evident than in Windows Vista, which launched in 2007 on hardware that wasn't always prepared to deal with its increased memory and graphics requirements.

This trend has been turned on its head in recent years, at least in part by the popularity of small computing devices with comparatively little processing power. Netbooks filled this role during the Windows 7 era, and tablets are filling it now. In order to support them, Microsoft's stated goal with both Windows 7 and Windows 8 has been to keep the operating system's performance and resource usage level between versions. New features can be introduced, but only if the software can be tweaked so these new features don't drive up the hardware requirements.

We've already done some testing of these claims in our full Windows 8 review, where we saw that the new operating system's performance was broadly similar to Windows 7's. In this piece, we'll be diving just a bit deeper, testing things across multiple systems to get an idea of how Windows 8 will perform on more diverse hardware.

Test systems

For most of these tests, our primary testbed was a custom-built gaming PC with a 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 960 CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU, 12GB of DDR3 RAM, and a Crucial M4 solid-state drive—not quite state-of-the art, but a high-end system from a couple of years back. We've also widened our sample size with several other test systems, as seen in the table below. Nota bene: The bottom two systems were used solely to run gaming benchmarks.

General performance

Boot-up times

We've already talked a bit about Windows 8's improved boot time, which takes advantage of Windows' hibernation technology to save core OS processes to disk as they're unloaded from memory, rather than purging them completely and then loading the OS from scratch at next boot. Our main test system, which has a fast quad-core processor and SSD, certainly benefits from this improvement. But it's even better on low-end systems.

We measured boot times on our two lower-end machines. The results speak for themselves.

Note that because these improvements rely on the hibernation feature, disabling hibernation will erase most of this performance advantage.

The old Compaq laptop is still the slowest in the bunch to boot, but this budget laptop from 2008 can boot Windows 8 about as quickly as our much newer, faster systems booted Windows 7. It's also worth reiterating just how much of a PC's boot time is wrapped up in the power-on self-test (POST) phase of booting. For newer UEFI-based systems with shorter POST times, boot speeds under 10 seconds should become commonplace if you've got a fast hard drive.

Synthetic benchmarks

To measure general system performance, we ran Futuremark's PCMark 7 tests on the same three systems running Windows 7 and Windows 8—this synthetic benchmark runs a variety of CPU, GPU, and storage tests to approximate performance in real-world workloads like video and image manipulation. The scores are pretty close, though our mini ITX desktop did about 200 points better in Windows 8.

To get some idea of why, we jumped down into the more detailed subscores to see what numbers were changing. The mini ITX desktop scored higher in the image manipulation tests in Windows 8 by a fair amount, which was enough to visibly boost its score. In any case, the scores aren't really high enough to make an old system feel new again, but Microsoft is still apparently taking pains to tweak things under the hood, even when systems are using the same graphics and chipset drivers in both Windows 7 and Windows 8.

File copy operations and USB 3.0 performance

Next up are our file copy tests. To test copy operation times, we put together a folder about 40GB in size filled with two different types of files: large files like ISOs and videos, which will generally copy over more quickly, and smaller files like pictures and music, which will generally copy over more slowly because the operating system has to make slight pauses continually to create new files as it copies them from disk to disk.

Testing USB 3.0 performance in Windows 8 is of particular interest, since the new operating system includes generic drivers for all USB 3.0 controllers that obviate the need for the separate, sometimes-difficult-to-track-down drivers Windows 7 requires. We copied the files from a USB 3.0 hard drive to the local disk (labeled as the "read" test in the charts below), and then copied them back from the local disk to the external drive (the "write" test). A very special thanks to the good people at G-Technology for lending us one of their G Drive slim external hard drives for use in this testing.

As we saw in our main review, the relative speed of file copy operations seems to differ based on the USB controller being used—the Intel USB 3.0 controller native to its 7-series chipsets offers slightly faster write speeds and slightly slower read speeds in Windows 8, while the Renesas (née NEC) USB controller in our gaming desktop was slightly better under Windows 8 in all circumstances. These slight differences in performance are small but consistent—the tests returned similar results even after several runs.

For USB 2.0 file transfers, the variances between runs were usually a little wider. In general, the results tracked with our USB 3.0 benches—the mini ITX desktop (below) had slightly slower reads but slightly quicker writes, while the reverse was true for the gaming desktop. The differences in speed between Windows 7 and Windows 8 are much less pronounced when using the slower interface, however.

Usually, Windows 8 is going to keep your USB transfers the same speed or make them slightly faster, but depending on your hardware you may see minor but measurable drops in performance. Hopefully these small issues can be ironed out as the OS matures.

78 Reader Comments

The one purported Win8 feature I'm curious about is the native support for 3D output (the kind you wear glasses for), would be interested in any info on this that takes it beyond a bullet point on a checklist.

Nice and complete as always, Ars but I would love to see some tests about how much time more (or less) this OS takes to achieve tasks in terms of use (for example, how much time or clicks does it take to do certain things compared to Win 7, etc.)

This is pretty much as expected, I would say. The performance increase has be tapering off with each new version of Windows. You can only optimize software so much before hardware becomes the determining factor.

That's interesting that benchmarks don't show Win 8 as significantly faster, because I know that my laptop sure as hell feels faster when I boot under win 8 than win 7. I wonder if they've just done that much UI enhancements to make it feel faster instead of focusing on raw performance as much.

That's interesting that benchmarks don't show Win 8 as significantly faster, because I know that my laptop sure as hell feels faster when I boot under win 8 than win 7. I wonder if they've just done that much UI enhancements to make it feel faster instead of focusing on raw performance as much.

Remember benchmarks are only as good as what they test. Your experience may vary. Benchmarks are terrific for base lining, and Ars has done a great job using multiple test. At the end of the day however, it's about how your computer works for you. So if it feels faster, or the UI makes you more productive, run with it. If not, maybe make whatever changes one can afford.

What about any AMD hardware? I'd be interested to see how scheduler changes affect Bulldozer/Piledriver CPUs, since there are supposed to be some improvements in Win8 to better use its architecture.

I, too, was disappointed here. One of the purported features of Windows 8 was a better scheduler for bulldozer modules, which should lead to increased performance there. We on Linux have already had this for quite some time, but I have friends that don't use Linux as extensively as I do, and I want to know if upgrading to Windows 8 would actually help their performance.

That's interesting that benchmarks don't show Win 8 as significantly faster, because I know that my laptop sure as hell feels faster when I boot under win 8 than win 7. I wonder if they've just done that much UI enhancements to make it feel faster instead of focusing on raw performance as much.

MS has done a lot to reduce latency, even if throughput isn't increased, also lots more non-blocking operations under the hood for the GUI gives a much better experiences.

I'm not sure if it's enough to drag me past Metro, but I'm sure I'll eventually get Win8 from my MSDN. SMB2.1, storage pooling, memory page de-dup, and virtualization sound worth it in the long run.

What about any AMD hardware? I'd be interested to see how scheduler changes affect Bulldozer/Piledriver CPUs, since there are supposed to be some improvements in Win8 to better use its architecture.

I, too, was disappointed here. One of the purported features of Windows 8 was a better scheduler for bulldozer modules, which should lead to increased performance there. We on Linux have already had this for quite some time, but I have friends that don't use Linux as extensively as I do, and I want to know if upgrading to Windows 8 would actually help their performance.

Maybe this author is just biased towards Intel. (I know Ars isn't)

No bias here, just no AMD-based systems in my arsenal.

It's interesting how firmly this "Windows 8 will fix Bulldozer" supposition has stuck in peoples' minds - in everything about it I've read, neither Windows 8 nor the Windows 7 scheduler hotfix improves single-threaded performance at all, and provides only slight gains in some multi-threaded tasks (typically 5% or less, generally less). It is in no way game changing.

Any interest in running network benchmarks between the systems? Anecdotal, but I definitely see a degredation in my networking throughputs and capabilities moving between the OSes on the same hardware.

By capabilities I mean ability to see and maintain a wireless connection, significantly lower SNRs, erratic behavior of the networking stack (randomly seems to drop and renew its DHCP lease), etc.

Edit: Also, there's something about those boot times that seems...off to me. The text about them doesn't match the labels in any way that I can figure. Brain fart on my part?

Whatever you think of Windows 8's new interface and rough edges, it's hard to find fault with its speed.

The "Modern Shell" has so few graphical embellishments that Windows Aero probably taxes your graphics card more aggressively. How could anybody possible believe that an interface consisting of a handful of untextured, unicolor rectangular polygons would tax anything other than the TI-99/4A or TRS-80 that sits forgotten in their parents' attic?

I'm guessing none of the tested motherboards (except maybe the two gaming ones) are using a UEFI BIOS because a POST boot time > 10seconds is certainly not typical. With the systems I have been testing that support UEFI firmware, I can achieve a POST boot time as quick as 3 seconds with OS boot time < 10 seconds. Also a factor slowing the boot time in the two gaming systems would be the use of mechanical hard drives instead of a SSD/flash boot device.

I'm not too surprised about the USB3.0 tests, seeing how Intel and Renesas were also the first choices for most OEMs when implementing USB3.0. But I would be more interested in a test based on average and/or maximum transfer speed. Measuring the time of a transfer is rather ambiguous given that each system configuration can vary wildly. Regardless, a USB3.0 speed test would not make or break my decision on whether to stick with Windows 7 or not.

Any interest in running network benchmarks between the systems? Anecdotal, but I definitely see a degredation in my networking throughputs and capabilities moving between the OSes on the same hardware.

By capabilities I mean ability to see and maintain a wireless connection, significantly lower SNRs, erratic behavior of the networking stack (randomly seems to drop and renew its DHCP lease), etc.

I would also be very interested in Win7<->Win8 file transfers and Win8<->Win8 File Transfers. Right now I can transfer about 114MB/s(avg over 5GB+ files) as listed on my file transfer via SMB and my NIC shows about 985Mb/s. I really wouldn't want to hurt this performance by being an early adopter.

I'm guessing none of the tested motherboards (except maybe the two gaming ones) are using a UEFI BIOS because a POST boot time > 10seconds is certainly not typical. With the systems I have been testing that support UEFI firmware, I can achieve a POST boot time as quick as 3 seconds with OS boot time < 10 seconds. Also a factor slowing the boot time in the two gaming systems would be the use of mechanical hard drives instead of a SSD/flash boot device.

I'm not too surprised about the USB3.0 tests, seeing how Intel and Renesas were also the first choices for most OEMs when implementing USB3.0. But I would be more interested in a test based on average and/or maximum transfer speed. Measuring the time of a transfer is rather ambiguous given that each system configuration can vary wildly. Regardless, a USB3.0 speed test would not make or break my decision on whether to stick with Windows 7 or not.

The mini ITX PC actually *does* have UEFI, but my experience with UEFI in custom-built PCs has not been that it speeds things up very much. I can say anecdotally that on a new laptop with a fast UEFI POST time and an SSD, though, boot is lightning fast.

On a mid high end machine (4.5 ghz i7, 16 GB ram, gtx 680) Windows 8 "feels" faster than Windows 7. Not just a little bit even, a lot faster. Benchmarking doesn't seem to any faster though. I think some of the stuff is just better responsiveness from the interface. Windows pop up a bit faster, programs open a bit faster, scrolling is a bit smoother. Some of the benefits could be from wddm 1.2, I do remember the CP struggling a little bit on my old 6950x2 using wddm 1.1 drivers from ATI. But then it was the CP so who knows.

Why should we see much difference? Its Windows 7 with a new user interface. Nothing really in the core kernel has changed. Other then I'll bet Microsoft cut some more fat from it to make it fit on a tablet OS and work better with ARM CPU's. Its most likely why Microsoft killed Aero effects and why they have gone back to a bland 2 dimensional type user interface. Its all focused on the tablet.

Why should we see much difference? Its Windows 7 with a new user interface. Nothing really in the core kernel has changed. Other then I'll bet Microsoft cut some more fat from it to make it fit on a tablet OS and work better with ARM CPU's. Its most likely why Microsoft killed Aero effects and why they have gone back to a bland 2 dimensional type user interface. Its all focused on the tablet.

wonder if it would have fared nearly as well if they hadn't axed aero?

In the early builds of Win 8 Aero effects were still very much present, yet Windows 8 was noticeably faster. Like someone mentioned earlier the Windows team went through great pains to decrease the amount of time that you are actually waiting on the computer, and decrease the amount of visual stutters/lockups. While throughput was not and cannot be increased much, the system feels very noticeably faster. In addition, they also implemented a number of technologies early on that help reduce memory usage and the amount of background programs using CPU. You can read more about it on the Building Windows Blog.

I don't want to start an OS war, but I'd be interested in seeing how Win 8 compares to other OS' with browser usage, etc. Win 8 vs. Apple vs. Linux. Some linux users keep swearing their browser runs better in linux than Windows, Minecraft runs faster i nlinux, some software runs faster in WINE than actual windows. Apple tailors its software to specific hardware, so maybe that's not a fair comparison? But, Windows and Linux both cover multiple hardware setups. It'd be interesting to see how they fair.

Ubuntu 12.10 & Windows 8 just happened to both come out in October ... just sayin...

performance wise it's at par (at times bellow) the performance of a 3.5 year OS (that in turn was pretty much based off of its predecessor, so really the engine is about 5 years old - and all these years are based on the release, not the time when they started working on it, which would push it back to 8 years). So no, in fact there is fault to be found with this "modern" OS. Windows 8 is a step backwards for MS and you know they know it too.

The perceived performance is much better. I guess with that logic, Linux is 15+ years old.

Any "modern" OS is going to 3-5 years to design and another 3-5 years to code. One may "tune" the design, but nothing major, just re-factoring really. Every time you refactor, you move around the choke-points in the system, so data-structures and interfaces change, but in the end, you still have mostly the same old OS.

About those boot times: when the start screens shows, scrolling on my touchpad doesn't yet work for a couple of seconds. It seems to me not everything is actually loaded yet when the start screen shows. That's one way to boost perceived start-up times, but not a really useful one.

If there really was a case to be made for upgrading from Win7 to Win8 on a desktop machine, it would have been on the performance front.

These benches clearly show some improvement, but it's of the variety I would deem imperceptible. Looking at some of the benches, your left wondering if anything has changed at all. or if you're just looking at noise.

About those boot times: when the start screens shows, scrolling on my touchpad doesn't yet work for a couple of seconds. It seems to me not everything is actually loaded yet when the start screen shows. That's one way to boost perceived start-up times, but not a really useful one.

For me I can use the system the instant it shows up. In two seconds I can have my password typed in and see the desktop. That is on a seven year old machine though, perhaps yours is older?

Edit: A seven year old machine that I just added SSDs to. Which also might account for the difference.

That's important if they're evaluating a single component (like a new video card or motherboard) where you're looking for sometimes barely above the margin of error differences in benchmarks. Here they're intentionally using old hardware to try to show what real-world use on existing hardware is. Nobody is going to go out and spec the same 2008 Compaq laptop they used here to try to get these exact numbers again. Or even further, nobody with that exact same laptop is going to go upgrading/downgrading bios versions if they're seeing a 3% difference in Minecraft speed compared to the article.

When I'm reading a review of a WhizBang AwesomeVGA 8850 card, and it's surprisingly showing a 10% loss in performance over last year's 8840 version, it's going to get some attention and people are going to try to replicate it. "Show your work" is important there, because it quite possibly will be fixed in a later driver version, and I'm going to want to know what version to avoid if I have the 8850.

When the question is "On hardware you likely already own, is Windows 8 overall faster or slower than Windows 7? Am I going to hate it for gaming like I did when Vista first came out?", I'm not trying to replicate their results nor dispute them so an extra page describing their test setup isn't necessary.

I was expecting to see some memory consumption benchmarks (both ad idle and doing stuff).

Windows releases are always accompanied to an increase in memory usage, maybe now that they are dropping eye candy effects, this is now different.

Memory consumption is increasingly difficult to measure on modern OSes. Memory that's totally free is wasted, because it could be caching something that you might need later and easily thrown away as soon as something needs memory. Many sub-systems will dynamically increase their memory use when there's lots of free memory, and start scaling back as soon as there's any kind of pressure on physical memory.

Unless you're careful to isolate these effects, any new system that makes more efficient use of otherwise wasted free memory is going to make the OS look like it's got higher memory requirements which isn't always true.

Nice and complete as always, Ars but I would love to see some tests about how much time more (or less) this OS takes to achieve tasks in terms of use (for example, how much time or clicks does it take to do certain things compared to Win 7, etc.)

About those boot times: when the start screens shows, scrolling on my touchpad doesn't yet work for a couple of seconds. It seems to me not everything is actually loaded yet when the start screen shows. That's one way to boost perceived start-up times, but not a really useful one.

For me I can use the system the instant it shows up. In two seconds I can have my password typed in and see the desktop. That is on a seven year old machine though, perhaps yours is older?

Edit: A seven year old machine that I just added SSDs to. Which also might account for the difference.

No, it's one year old and has an SSD. It's a netbook so not fast in anyway, but that doesn't explain why the touchpad drivers don't seem to load until after the start screen shows up.

On some other panes side-scrolling doesn't work at all, which is frustrating. It's a regular synaptics touchpad.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.